Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 354
“The truth is to cultivate intellectual piety as well as ritual observance, stillness as well as discipline, the importance of patience as a way of listening, rejection of complacency and conceit, the vital necessity of inner growth, the building of responsibility, the active involvement in aiding our fellow men, as well as a sense of authenticity.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 65)
“Intellectual piety” can be defined as worship of God with mind and heart. It is not so much purity, as I hear Rabbi Heschel this morning, as it is about not being a human doing that is devoid of thought during our ritual observance-whatever that may be from our morning coffee to meditation, to prayer, etc. Listening to Rabbi Heschel’s words and his desire to help us grow our learning, to learn about the whole person we are, our children are, every human being is, and this is not an easy task since most people shy away from doing this and find the ‘easier softer way of willful blindness’.
“To cultivate” comes from the Latin words which could mean “inhabit’, and Rabbi Heschel is telling us that it is not enough to stand on the sidelines, it is not okay to speak of them and make them intellectual exercises alone, we have to “inhabit” “intellectual piety” and “ritual observance” in the same moment, in the same time, otherwise we can never find the “sense of authenticity” we all crave and search for. The greatest problem facing humanity is the problem of authentically inhabiting our whole being as well as inhabiting our connection with God and one another. Without doing this, we will continue to live in the “half truths” spoken about yesterday, which are, in essence, lies!
We, the People, in this time and in all times, have to “inhabit”, have “to cultivate”, to grow our inner life in order to achieve any form of “intellectual piety” and to live into our ritual observances not as check lists but as growth spurts for our minds and spirits. Denying the needs of our inner life because it is not ‘intellectual enough’, because “religion is the opiate of the masses” is as ridiculous as denying the needs of our intellects because “all we have to do is give it up to Jesus” when Jesus as cajoling his followers to care for one another, to not favor the rich, to speak truth to power, etc. The Ultra-Orthodox Jews use their “ritual observance” especially since Oct. 7, 2023, much like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell did after 9/11; blaming the non-observant, the people who follow the spirit of the Torah and the Bible for the massacre and saying God wants ‘our enemies’ to be totally destroyed and Gaza, the West Bank be part of Israel, so they can build the 3rd Temple. Be it the Far right Christians who want Armageddon, the Christian Nationalists who want power and control over everyone who is not white, christian male smart enough to be part of the power structure, or the Orthodoxy of some Jews to believe they are “chosen” to have dominion and rule over people-all of them are in denial of the message of Rabbi Heschel above. This is why We, the People have to “inhabit” and grow our inner life and have a response that stands up to the withering lies and onslaught of anger, denial and cult-like behaviors of those few who are seeking power and destruction of freedom for all.
We, the People, get to learn how to engage in “patience as a way of listening”, we can use “stillness as well as discipline” so we are better grounded in our self, in our truths, in our ways of being at one with the universe, at one with nature, at one with each other. This is the goal of the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the teachings of Buddha, et al-to be at one with self, universe, nature and one another. We cannot get there unless we are “listening” to one another with an open heart and mind-hence the need for “intellectual piety”.
We the People, also need to “reject complacency and conceit”, we have to end our need to keep the status quo because the world is always moving, the earth keeps spinning whether we feel it or not, we keep changing whether we are aware of it or not, the expansion of freedom and holiness is an onward march that some humans keep trying to retard with the status quo and it only works for a moment until there is another revolution and then another pushback. We, the people, in rejecting our “complacency and conceit” are making the statement that learning is the goal, learning from what we do well and what we don’t do well, learning from the wisdom of antiquity and the wisdom of today, engaging with the texts that have survived the test of time and action not to do the same as ‘they did’, rather to see how the wisdom applies to our lives, in the moment, in ways that we uniquely see and can engage with-the world doesn’t need another Moses, it needs each of us to be uniquely our authentic self.
“Building responsibility”, engaging in “the active involvement in aiding our fellow men, as well as a sense of authenticity” is the goal I set for myself long ago. I know without ‘intellectual piety”, “ritual observance”, “stillness”, “listening” “rejection of complacency and conceit” it is impossible for me to get near, much less reach this goal. I have been engaged in all of these behaviors for the past 38 years and it was a return for me to the days of learning from my father, grandfathers, relatives of blessed memory. I have built a life of being responsible for my errors and my good deeds, knowing they don’t cancel one another out and I have to acknowledge the good which is harder than beating myself up for the errors. I have built up inner responsibility with the many actions and ways I have been actively involved in “aiding” any and all human beings I can. I live authentically and it isn’t always pretty, in fact it is usually messy. Yet, I have no regrets for my life and I am remorseful for the actions that harmed people, especially those closest to me. I am not perfect nor is anyone, including God, asking me or you to be. We are “to cultivate”, to grow and live into our inner life, our responsibility, our caring for one another, and our authentic selves. We are not expected to be ‘there’! Yet, in the need for certainty and perfection, people have put this onus upon me and I have put this yoke on myself. “Inhabiting” the words and teachings of today renews my commitment to leave “certainty and perfection” so I can better live into what is right here, right now. I am asking you to join me in cultivating a way of being that rejects the lies of our conceited ego, that rejects the mendacity and deception of those trying to control us with falseness and deceptions of what freedom is. I am committed to living more consciously each day, to being a better version of myself each day, to forgiving those who harm me and discard me, to reaching out to people as a source of strength and wisdom, to wrestle with people over how to live the principles and values that inhabit our inner life and “to cultivate” a little more each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark